Producers: Robert Zemeckis, Derek Hogue, Jack Rapke and Bill Block Director: Robert Zemeckis Screenplay: Eric Roth and Robert Zemeckis Cast: Tom Hanks, Robin Wright, Paul Bettany, Kelly Reilly, Michelle Dockery, Gwilym Lee, David Fynn, Ophelia Lovibond, Nicholas Pinnock, Nikki Amuka-Bird, Cache Vanderpuye, Anya Marco-Harris, Tony Way, Jemima Rooper, Joel Oulette, Dannie McCallum, Keith Bartlett, Daniel Betts, Leslie Zemeckis, Zsa Zemeckis, Lauren McQueen, Beau Gadsdon, Jonathan Aris, Albie Salter, Henry Marcus, Lily Aspell, Mohammed George, Dexter Soll Ansell, Delilah O’Riordan and Stuart Bowman Distributor: Sony Entertainment/TriStar Pictures
Grade: C-
In 1993 Ingmar Bergman delivered one of his most celebrated films, “Scenes from a Marriage.” Now, thirty years later, Robert Zemeckis offers one that falls at the opposite end of the quality spectrum. One might prefer to call it “Clichés from Multiple Marriages,” but, like the 2014 graphic novel by Richard McGuire from which Zemeckis and Eric Roth adapted their screenplay, it’s titled “Here.”
That’s explained by the conceit it shares with the book, of presenting everything from a single perspective, as if cinematographer Don Burgess’s camera were permanently stuck in a single spot. For the most part it’s a space in the living room of a house that’s shown being built in the early twentieth century across from an already standing colonial mansion which, we’re informed, once housed William Franklin, the illegitimate son of Benjamin, with whom the younger man disagreed on the war for independence from Great Britain.
But there are a few sequences depicting the place prior to that. One depicts dinosaurs tramping about, Jurassic Park style, before disaster strikes. There’s no marital bliss apparent there, or in the moments in which Benjamin and William Franklin (Keith Bartlett and Daniel Betts) appear more than a hundred years prior to the new house’s construction, but there is in the few brief insertions showing a Native American couple (Joel Oulette and Dannie McCallum) living out their lives in the area.
These vignettes aren’t presented chronologically, and the same can be said of those portraying moments in the lives of the families that occupy the more recently-built house. But the details in Ashley Lamont’s extravagant production design and Joanne Johnston’s period-emphatic costumes make what follows what obvious. The first family are the Harkers. John (Gwilym Lee) is an aviation enthusiast who bought (or built) the place because of its proximity to an aerodrome; his wife Pauline (Michelle Dockery) worries about his passion for flying, and is incensed when he takes their daughter (Delilah O’Riordan) up for a spin.
Following a death in the family, ownership passes to the Beekmans. Leo (David Fynn) is a garrulous inventor who spends his days tinkering over perfecting a recliner, while his wife Stella (Ophelia Lovibond), a model, frolics with him endlessly over the improvements he comes up with. When he sells the device—christened the La-Z-Boy by the investors—they apparently use the proceeds to move to a millionaire’s mansion.
Then come the two generations of the Youngs, whose years in the house predominate. It’s bought around 1945 by vet Al (Paul Bettany), who moves in with his wife Rose (Kelly Reilly). The house will eventually be inherited by their oldest son Richard (Tom Hanks) and his wife Margaret (Robin Wright). In brief, Al, who’s hearing impaired as a result of shelling and probably PTSD, constantly shouts, and as a Depression-era child he’s always obsessing about staying within their means; Ruth is subservient and tolerant. Richard gives himself over to sketching and painting, and hopes to become an artist. But when Margaret gets pregnant in their high school years and they marry, his hopes are dashed, and he too must go into the salesman game, always worried about money. Margaret, meanwhile, resents living with his parents, and even when they take over the house wants a place that’s really their own. Their daughter Vanessa (Zsa Zsa Zemeckis) grows up to be a lawyer.
The last family are an African-American couple, Devon and Helen Harris (Nicholas Pinnock and Nikki Amuka-Bird), and their son Justin (Cache Vanderpuye). Their time in the house is treated so perfunctorily that the only memorable segment is “the talk” that Devon has with Justin about how carefully he must act if he’s pulled over by a traffic cop—something we’ve seen many times before—though there’s also an intimation of the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic in the person of their housekeeper Raquel (Anya Marco-Harris).
The script portrays lots of “significant moments” in all the occupants’ lives—weddings, births, deaths, funerals, Thanksgiving celebrations, parties, graduations, financial hopes and reversals, accidents and illnesses—but so briskly that they seem emotionally weightless, especially since the dialogue provided by Zemeckis and Eric Roth is so pedestrian and on-the-nose that it might have been lifted from any banal TV drama series. You would think, for instance, that when Margaret, suffering the effects of a stroke, is brought back to the now-empty house by the aged Richard, the impact might be touching, but it’s played with all the subtlety of a mawkish tearjerker. And the occasional attempts to link up the disparate episodes (like the arrival of an archaeologist who wants to investigate the backyard for Native American artifacts) grate with their ham-fistedness. One can only wonder to what desperate lengths editor Jesse Goldsmith must have gone not only to figure out how to maintain coherence, but to remove the most embarrassingly overwrought footage.
Nor are things helped by the static-camera perspective, which might at first seem inventive but shortly comes to seem a misguided stunt, rather reminiscent of the dull compositions of early sound movies rather than the cool experiment that Zemeckis, who’s always been obsessed with technical innovation, appears to think it is. Directors like Hitchcock and Kubrick loved to test themselves too, but their penchant was for increased fluidity even within steady shots, and the technique here just feels stagebound, with characters often leaving the frame by rushing toward and past our line of vision—to heaven knows where, since we never see where they wind up. The effect, combined with the hapless script, is deadening rather than enlightening, especially since the action is smothered in the strains of Alan Silvestri’s syrupy score, which overlooks no opportunity to swoon sentimentally.
And it’s all weighed down by VFX work supervised by Kevin Baillie that’s frankly subpar, like those galumphing dinos or the gruesomely artificial hummingbird that flutters around at the beginning and end, presumably as a Zemeckis signature. Worst of all, though, is the de-aging process which is not only terrible on a technical level (Hanks, made to look like a plastic teenager and a poorly-dubbed one at that, is the most gruesome example) but ruins the possibility of good actors giving nuanced performances. Virtually every member of the cast overacts, hammering home every banality in the screenplay as though it were deep drama rather than the soapoperatic piffle it is. Bettany, usually a reliable fellow, is the gravest offender, but the rest aren’t far behind. (Tony Way has a death scene so broad that it’s sure to elicit guffaws.)
Given that there’s unlikely to be much enthusiasm for “Here,” a sequel seems unlikely. But if one is envisioned, perhaps it should be set in the house across the way, which given its history might have been a more interesting site, even if the glimpses here showing Benjamin and William Franklin are among the movie’s worst. (The nadir certainly comes when we see a Revolutionary soldier riding up to announce: “Message from George Washington! The war’s over! We won!” But that’s not counting the horrendous insert where Richard and his younger brother Jimmy, played by Albie Salter, appear as dueling Benjamins at a costume party, one-upping each other by quoting the great man’s witticisms.)
Anyway, they could call the sequel “There.” It couldn’t be any worse than “Here,” which apparently wants to suggest that even the most humble places have witnessed profoundly human moments but instead proves that when treated with such stunning artificiality some places just might not be worth visiting.